Internal branding at university: Do tenure and job security matter?

Abstract

Universities, as educational service providers, must pay attention to their employees who are pivotal in delivering and communicating brand promise and service quality to the stakeholders. While branding initiatives most frequently focus on external stakeholders, internal branding efforts establish systems/processes and consequent employees' behaviour that are consistent with external branding efforts. With a sample of 753 faculty members and researchers from a Spanish public University, the study aims to establish if employee tenure and job security have a significant relationship with employees' brand commitment and employees' brand supporting behaviour. An analysis of variance was carried out for testing the hypothesis. Differences were found according to tenure in employees' brand commitment while job security did not impact significantly on employees' brand commitment. In addition, a positive and significant relationship were found between employees' brand supporting behaviour and tenure, but not for job security. For business practitioners, this research state that it is essential for service companies, such as universities, to use differing approaches to employees according to their organisational tenure as an important managerial implication.